At least 14 people have been killed in the Ukrainian city of Dnipro after a Russian drone struck a railway station on Thursday morning.
Ten more people were injured in the attack on the station, part of the Kremlin’s expanding aerial assaults on civilian Ukrainian targets on Thursday that left at least 19 people dead across the war-torn nation.
Kyiv authorities reported that the death toll included two 15-year-old girls who were killed by a Russian cruise missile in the northern city of Chernihiv, and two more civilians who died when a Russian drone hit an apartment block in the central Ukraine city of Kremenchuk.
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Russia’s Defence Ministry, meanwhile, said air defenses downed 1,214 Ukrainian drones overnight in one of the largest drone attacks launched by Kyiv. Around half of the drones were heading to the Russian capital, Moscow Mayor Sergei Sobyanin said.
CNN reported that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky condemned the Dnipro strike as “horrific” and once again demanded sanctions against Moscow.
“Just how many terrorist strikes has Russia carried out against our people since sanctions were lifted on certain Russian oligarchs and the Russian energy sector, rather than de-escalating?” he wrote in a social media post.
The message comes less than three weeks after US President Donald Trump reversed years of US pressure on Moscow over its war with Ukraine by declaring he had struck a deal to obtain diesel from Russia.
The strikes across swathes of Ukraine were a stark juxtaposition to the situation in Oleshky where a localized ceasefire between Russia and Ukraine stretched into a third day and military units cleared away landmines ahead of the arrival humanitarian aid into the stricken city on Friday.
Moscow and Kyiv have observed the truce in and around the devastated southern Ukrainian city since Tuesday, despite remaining locked in war since Russia’s all-out invasion of its neighbor more than 4 ½ years ago. Previous efforts to secure ceasefires either never worked out or the truces quickly fell apart
The planned six-day ceasefire around Russian-occupied Oleshky has brought a rare and welcome stillness for civilians in the nearby city of Kherson, which is held by Ukraine and has also been wracked by the war.
The Oleshky ceasefire has held for 54 hours, officials say
Both sides thanked US First Lady Melania Trump for what the White House said was her role in helping broker the temporary ceasefire so that food and medical supplies can reach some desperate 2,000 people trapped in Oleshky. Pope Leo XIV also pressed for a truce.
“The ceasefire has been in place for 54 hours now,” Ukrainian ombudsman Dmytro Lubinets said Thursday, adding that aid deliveries were due to begin the following day. “The parties are fully adhering to the agreements, and no violations of the ceasefire have been reported.”
His Russian counterpart, Yana Lantratova, confirmed the truce was holding and that Russian engineers are working on de-mining Oleshky roads.
“Both sides are fully honoring their commitments, and no violations have been recorded,” she said. “This allows military personnel to continue clearing roads of mines and to prepare a safe passage for the humanitarian convoy.”
Local people will also be able to evacuate, either into Russia or Ukraine, officials say. The mechanics of how that might work were unclear.
